Collective nouns—such as family, team, audience, group, jury, crowd, band, class, and committee—refer to a group. Collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms, depending on whether they refer to the group as a single unit or to the multiple members of the group. The meaning of a sentence as a whole is your guide to whether a collective noun refers to a unit or to the multiple parts of a unit.

The jury acts as a single unit.

The members of the jury act as multiple individuals.

Family here refers to the many ducks; they cannot scatter as one.

Treat fractions that refer to singular nouns as singular and those that refer to plural nouns as plural.

Treat phrases starting with the number of as singular and with a number of as plural.